Fate is a fickle mistress
by Lady Invidia
Summary: One change in time can ripple outwards causing untold differences to how events are supposed to happen.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I'm not making any money, and the recent adaptation belongs to BBC, and the Moff.

Warnings: Possible slash if you squint a lot.

Summary: Fate is a fickle mistress. One change in time can ripple outwards causing untold differences to how events are supposed to happen.

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**Fate is a fickle mistress.**

**...  
**

_There are events that are set so firmly in stone that no matter how hard you might wish for it, or how much you might want it, they will always remain. _

_...  
_

The searing heat of the desert. Sweat dripping down his back, making his clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin. Shifting nervously he blinks, sees a shimmer in the distance. Distracts him for a second. A second too long. The blazing pain radiates outwards from his shoulder, makes him lose his breath as his vision swims in front of him and then briefly he sees the shimmer in the distance taking shape, an overwhelming sense of piercing grey focused on him. Then blackness as he finally reaches the blessed release of unconsciousness.

...

_And then there are the points in time where something seemingly simple, seemingly normal, can fracture reality and cause endless possibilities._

_...  
_

"John, John Watson! It's Stamford, Mike Stamford. "

John turns around startled from his thoughts while walking across the park.

"We were at Barts together." The man continues and then suddenly John remembers.

"Yes, yes sorry. Mike, how are you?"

"Yeah, I know. I got fat." Mike looks ashamed so John states a quick no.

"I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at, what happened." Mike suddenly asks jovially.

"I got shot," is the succinct reply.

Twenty minutes later sees them both with a cup of coffee on a park bench catching up.

"Are you still at Barts then?"

Mike nods, "teaching now. Yeah, bright young things like we used to be. God I hate them."

John laughs, remembering that he actually quite likes the man after all.

"What about you, just staying in town till you get yourself sorted?"

"Can't afford London on an army pension."

"Ah, and you couldn't bear to be anywhere else. That's not the John Watson I know."

"Yeah, I'm not that John Watson"

"Couldn't Harry help?"

"Yeah, Like that's going to happen."

Mike pauses, tilts his head to one side as if assessing John more closely. "Well, there is another option…"

An hour later sees them entering one of the labs at Barts.

"A bit different since my day," John mutters. Mike hums in agreement "You have no idea" while he searches for his mobile that he has left here earlier by accident. John spots a box in the corner full of piles of notes and a practically new microscope. He feels drawn towards it, not able to resist he walks over. His fingers stroke gently over the notes, tracing the elegant handwriting, not really taking in the words, but for a second he can hear them by his ear. Talking about an experiment that would help prove a man's alibi.

"Aha! Found it!" Mike turns towards him just as John pulls his hand back from the box as if stung, shaking his head slightly before he smiles back and walks out of the room with Mike to talk more about the possibility of working at Barts in a teaching role. A role where it wouldn't matter if he had a shaking hand and a limp.

...

_These fractures can cause fissures, ripples that have near endless reach._

_...  
_

"Tea, John?"

"Ah, Thanks Mrs Hudson"

"Just this once mind, I'm your landlady not your housekeeper!"

John smiles faintly at his new landlady, taking the freshly brewed cup from her before settling back down in his armchair. He sighs comfortably. The place had been a piece of extraordinary luck if he did say so himself. Having spent a few weeks on Mike's sofa he'd been getting desperate to find his own place, when he'd literally bumped into the answer. A little lady, struggling with her shopping bags. Being the consummate gentleman that he was he'd quickly offered his services only to be practically kidnapped and swamped by tea, frilly dollies, and an endless litany of complaints about how the person who was going to rent the rooms upstairs had simply not turned up a few weeks ago, and although she had counted him as someone she owed a favour to, she really needed the rent and money didn't grow on trees now did it? And just like that John found himself opening his mouth and saying he'd take it. He hadn't even seen it but he knew he needed to live there, and she gave him a special deal. Plus with his new job he could more than afford it as long as he kept to the slightly frugal existence he was used to. A flash of purple has John briefly glancing over to the couch. Nothing is there. For some reason that John doesn't know, this seems wrong.

...

_And as the fissures continue sometimes in places they fuse almost back together…_

_...  
_

John is visiting Molly in the morgue, a recent friend he's made at Bart's, when they bring in the fourth suicide. He sees the look of absolute dread on the woman's face, sending an ominous shiver down his spine, before Molly pulls the cover back over her face.

"They're saying it might not be suicides now, something about new evidence at the scene suggesting it may have been a murder for revenge." Molly gossips. John can't shake off the feeling that that's not quite right. "I knew a man once," She paused, "He'd have known…" She finished in a soft whisper. John suddenly feels like he's imposing. "And how did you find this new information out hmm? Nothing at all to do with that man I saw you flirting with yesterday?" He teases her and things are back to normal as she blushes at his insinuations, his worries pushed to the back of his mind.

That night though, when he goes out to the pub, he keenly feels the absence of his service revolver. Especially so when a few hours later he's staring down at the dying taxi driver who had just tried to kill him, his aneurism finally having served its strange brand of justice. He looks to his left at the opposite building and catches his reflection looking back with worry and a familiar object in its steady hand.

Strangely the police don't seem to want to question him on events this evening; merely informing him to come in in the morning. They seem, instead, focused on a man in a three piece suit who is gesticulating at the scene with an old fashioned umbrella. He catches the words Moriarty and brother before the ambulance crew allow him to leave, still holding his orange shock blanket. Randomly he decides to pick up some take away on his way home. He tries to ignore the sense of missing something, or perhaps someone, important as he steps into the hallway of 122b Baker Street, before he climbs the seventeen steps to his empty flat.

...

_And then sometimes the fissures separate even further, branching out, until the gaps between them are so wide you can no longer tell that they were once part of the same whole._

_...  
_

It had been a busy week as far as John was concerned, but he'd still found the time to meet up with Fiona, a nice woman he'd met at his local pub. She was warm and friendly with blond hair and deep brown eyes; although occasionally from the corner of his eye he could swear they were grey. It was their fourth date and they'd decided to visit the British museum and then go for a meal nearby at a new restaurant, the Jade Pin. John only really remembers one thing about the actual date, an old teapot that they had passed in the museum that had lost its shine and had begun to crack. For some reason it had seemed terribly sad that it was in such a state. The rest of his memory of that night, however, was taken up with Fiona's skin, and hands, and hair, and lips. The next day as he left Fiona's flat with a spring in his step he barely noticed the billboards advertising today's headlines, Bank PA Amanda Evans found murdered.

...

_And still there are endless realities swirling side by side, never quite touching._

_...  
_

It was a simple case of wrong time, wrong place. John had been walking home after spending the afternoon at Ripley's Odditorium in Piccadilly Circus with Sam, a woman he had met on the tube and hit it off with. She had curly black hair and the most graceful long hands he had ever seen. Something about her had just screamed home. And then, just as he had been about to cross the road, he saw on the roof opposite a sniper. Instincts long thought lost sprang to life as John noticed where its red light was pointed to. A lone man standing in the centre of all the human traffic. Limp forgotten, hand steady, he ran across the road before leaping on the shaking man, pushing him to the floor and covering his body with his own. Screams filled the air and all of a sudden a familiar pain raced through his nerve endings. He had been shot. Again. Luckily unconsciousness greeted him much sooner this time.

...

_And then there are the moments where events will reconnect, where the fractures will be filled and for one brief moment in time the realities are running in sync again._

_...  
_

John Watson lay in the hospital bed not wanting to open his eyes. He wriggled his toes and fingers experimentally. Good, movement of all limbs was still possible. Sluggishly he shifted side to side, possibility of morphine? Concussion? His head felt strange, perhaps he had sustained a head wound? Great, just his luck. As if he hadn't enough medical problems already. He snorted softly. Then suddenly he heard rustling coming from his left hand side, so bracing himself he opened his eyes and looked to his left. He saw a man sat on a bed, dressed in a hospital gown. His face was covered with thick stubble. His hair mussed and unkempt.

"Where am I?" He asked hoarsely.

"I would have thought that would be obvious to even one such as you. Still, I suppose we can make allowances considering possible brain damage. You're in the intensive care ward at St Thomas's in London."

John blinked blearily across to the stranger who had pulled his knees up beneath him and was beginning to lean towards him, across the gap between their beds, staring with his piercing grey, and familiar, eyes.

"So, Dr Watson. Afghanistan or Iraq?"

...

_The game was back on._

_...  
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_**The End.**_

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**A/N** This is my first story put up here so any criticism, good or bad, is much appreciated. Thanks. Any I promise the next story I put up will be happier._**  
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